After covering boats, boxes and Babylon last week, our geographical location shifts this week at first.

C: Canaan

Canaan is the complete opposite of Babylon. Canaan is where the Jews got kicked out of because they didn’t pay attention to God’s warning about bad stuff happening.

The Jews weren’t always in Canaan though. After leaving Egypt they wandered around the desert for about forty years.

However, they knew they were going to Canaan which was described with some of the greatest imagery you’ll ever get: a land flowing with milk and honey. They weren’t there yet but they knew the land was going to be theirs. This is why Canaan is also called “The Promised Land”.

Sometimes people talk about ‘their promised land’ or ‘their Canaan’ as a reference to something they believe God has said he will give them. They may be encouraged by others to ‘Step up into your promised land’ or to ‘Get out of the desert and claim your Canaan’.

Effectively there’s a whole lot of geographical symbolism going on in the lingo here:

Egypt = slavery, life stinks

Desert = wandering about as a nomadic tribe in hot sand, life stinks

Canaan = promises fulfilled, lots of food, beautiful place, life’s great

Babylon = exile, life stinks again

D: Daniel

If someone ever tells you “You’re a real Daniel” this is a compliment.

Daniel was one of the Jews shipped off to Babylon. He had three friends with great names: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  He had good looks and a great brain (what a guy) which meant he was enlisted to study at the Babylonian Palace so he could serve the king.

He also had some standards that he didn’t want to drop, which meant that he refused to eat the food and wine he was given, because he knew parts of the servings were used in spiritual ceremonies to other gods.

So he only ate vegetables and water which doesn’t sound great. If anyone ever tells you that they’re “doing a Daniel diet” that’s what they mean. I won’t judge at all if your follow up question to them is “Please tell me why.”

Despite eating different food, Daniel and his friends turned out to be way better than all the King’s magicians, so they hung around the palace for a good while. This gave Daniel a chance to interpret the King’s dreams, explain the meaning of words written on a wall by a human hand that suddenly appeared out of nowhere and to be thrown into a den of lions because he continued praying to God when he was told he had to stop.

Fortunately for Daniel he wasn’t eaten, but the guys who busted him for praying were instead.

That’s Daniel in a nutshell. He was a good bloke.

E: Edify

So this word isn’t strictly Jesus slang, but I rarely (if ever) hear it outside Churchland.

Edification can happen through teaching. Edification can happen through a conversation. Edification has the whole idea of building up another person. This makes sense because the word edifice is another word for a building.

Obviously encouraging other people in their faith is building them up. Telling them something they don’t yet know about The Bible is adding to their spiritual building or perhaps even laying the foundations.

Yours in edification,

Alison